Coil springs and torsion bars are the easiest way to lower a truck.
Let’s face it, you can for almost no money, either heat or cut coil springs.
Torsion bars are even easier. Its so tempting, too many people have
either turned back their torsion bars, or cut their springs and tried to live with it, only to finally say "I can't take it anymore”. If you have ever ridden in a truck lowered this way you know what I am saying. Ladies must wear sports bra’s, no piping hot drive-thru coffee on this trip. Well enough of that, it is the cheapest and oddly enough, the absolute worst way to lower a truck. But why does cheap have to be so bad? Lets explore - when you heat a coil, at the very least the area you heat up loses its spring temper (the ability of the steel
to rebound or remember to return to its original position after it
has been compressed) or in other words it just sets there like a
lump.If the rest of the spring is not damaged (a big if) the rate will
still increase a great deal while the stress applied to the spring increases
even more. The spring is severely over levered. If you cut your
springs the same thing happens. This is of course dependent on
how much you cut. It is possible to trim springs to balance or
fine tune a ride height, but were talking about removing 1/4 coil or
less, and is generally done by very experienced installers, and that’s
not going to lower your truck very much. Ok wise guy, so what do we
do? About the same time that dropped spindles came along,
engineered lower coil springs hit the market place and are used
every day by enthusiasts to get the stance they want. Used by them
selves you can get up to 3" of drop and combine them with a spindle
or control arm you can get more. Remember though, dropped springs
cause you to lose travel (ride quality), always have a higher spring rate (ride quality) and require different shocks (more money). You also have to deal with the alignment issue. When you lower your truck with a lowered coil spring (or heat/cut) you induce negative camber. And negative camber is not good, (check out the alignment tutorial for very important detailed information regarding proper alignment). Negative camber is the top of the tire pointing in, remember the control arm tutorial, the upper control arm is how you correct this problem. So you can run the upper arm out as far as it will go and hope that’s enough, sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. Important stuff to consider when deciding how to lower your truck. HEY blabbermouth tutorial dude I have torsion bars. Relax and just turn them back man. It may be the only thing worse than heating/cutting a coil spring. If you want to turn your bump stop into the most important part of your front suspension, then go for it. Actually you have a cheaper solution to your problem than the coil spring guy’s with all the same bad side effects – torsion bar keys! These things really work, you can get a couple of inches of drop because the key changes the indexing of the torsion bar. That means your torsion bar carries the same load at a lowered ride height. Sounds super bitchin right, their inexpensive, pretty easy to install, and gives you a couple of inches. And they do, but with a loss of travel, (ride quality) induces negative camber, (tire wear, alignment issues) and makes your bump stops a very active part of your suspension.